The redhead is the clumsiest person on the face of the earth.

So far Deni has tripped over the same doorstop three times outside her classroom building while holding the door for people. She has managed to trip over the soccer ball twice on the turf field while trying to look cool and skinned the same knee badly in two different places. She also somehow knocked over a flour jar with her butt while washing the dishes and dropped the serving spoon, full with dinner on the way to her plate on her place matt three or our times.
And her gracelessness acquired tens across the board. Thank you, thank you.

Please join us again for another report on "The redhead is the clumsiest person in the world!"

The redhead has seen Harry Potter und Der Stein der Weisen.

For those of you who have no freakin' clue what that says above... It means I saw the first Harry Potter movie in German yo.
(I'm not sure why I added 'yo' to the end of the sentence...)
In doing so, I also found out that the word for Earwax is "Ohrensmalz". Weird huh?
And in the time that has passed between today and the last time I wrote a post for those of you across the puddle, I have discovered that sometimes I feel like a baby being here. (a wittle tiny baby as my sister would so rightly proclaim.) There are a couple reasons for that. The first is that I cannot remember my dreams at this point, mostly because, my dreams are unsure whether they should be in German or English. I only dream pictures like a baby. Secondly, I pride myself with accomplishments like,"Answered a Question in History Correctly" and "Did Math Homework Without Help" or even simply "Understood". Not that I'm saying those are the accomplishments a baby strives for... but you get what I mean, they are simple things that not only happened regularly in the life before but were almost like breathing for me. You see in school it used to go like this: Teacher ask a question, Deni volunteer, Teacher picks Deni, Deni answers. Repeat, until of course my teachers would stop picking me because they wanted other people to volunteer.... Now, I am the person who asks about everything two or three times. the person who needs someone else to explain. And also lately, I've been getting songs stuck in my head from Kindergarten and the like such as,"Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere" when we're done with a chem lab or "Can you feel the love tonight" from The Lion King, which I am still puzzled as to how I got it stuck in my head...
  (I think this baby analogy sounded better in my head than it does here...)
But there are a lot of things that make me feel much more independent and adultish too. I have taken the bus on a number of occations by myself and nothing has gone wrong yet. I rode my bike to school everyday this week and only got lost once only for five minutes and I wasn't even late for class. I clean my room on a regular basis. I try to do my homework by myself most nights. I help with dinner almost every night and I have money which I actually (mostly) spend on only things I need. I have a money card that I can use with the magical money machine and get cash!!!! I know, I'm so adult-like that you can't even stand it. (:

Oh and some good news: I am not going to die! (sorry, that was in Deni language, let me translate) I'm not going to be graded in French! YAY!
now have a lovely goddamn weekend, I know I will, even if it's raining because all I have to do for monday is English homework!

The redhead has had a week of school already! Weird.

OHMYGOD.
I know what you're thinking, I've been slacking a little with this blog things seeing as something incredibly big in "The German Experience"  happened... and that was... I went to school!!!!
Boo-Yay! (It's both.)
My first day was weird... for me. Because I did many things I had never done before. I used public transportation (and have been successfully all week), I experienced my first "Pause" and many afterward, I experienced math in German, I sat through a class I knew absolutely  nothing about (French), and I managed to lug about 13 books in my backpack.
First public transportation. Public transportation means it's crowded, sometimes loud, and most of the time it smells weird. My first day in the bus I got on and it was so crowded I was basically pressed into the windsheild. Mostly the other breif inhabitors of the bus were students like me and early morning workers. It was pretty loud and it smelled like a mixture of too much perfume and cigarrette breath and it wasn't exactly pleasant. When we got to the school we waited in the office until someone knew where I was going, then I went with my German teacherto sort of my 'Homeroom' ish. It's where I have the majority of my classes. I was told to sit next to the window and met my first schoolfriend, Carolin. She helps me in a lot of my classes, she's very smart. I met all the people around me and then suddenly after getting my schedule from the teacher we had a "Pause". This one was short 5  minutes or so. There is a pause every hour (I think). The pause after that is a longer pause for 20 mintues or so. When we have afternoon school we have a lunchpause for about an hour and the weirdest thing about pauses are that you can go anywhere. You can go anywhere and do anything as long as it's not against the law and you get back in time for class.
As of today I've had all my subjects all of which I sort of understand except French. I know how to say two things in French: Wi and Bonjour. That's it. The class I'm in has had French for about 5 years. Great. Luckily the teacher is very sweet and after I explained the problem decided that I would learn what I could learn what i could and that was that. Math we learned about functions, which was interesting the first two days because I understood nothing! luckily, my host family dad is a math super genius so he helped me understand it better and now i'm doing pretty good and i kind of understand my teacher!
another weird thing is that my schedule here is different each day of the week and depending on the day I could be home at 12ish or I could be home at 5ish. Today was a long one and I know that my blog posts are getting lame and I'm sorry... My next one will be SUPERMEGAFOXYAWESOMEHOTT, but right now... I'm tired. Guten Nacht.

The redhead has friends!

You know what I really love about Germany? Of course you don't! (it's not like I've said I liked anything about Germany in my previous posts.)
Well, I love how everyone is so nice and hospitable and sweet to people they have just met. Or I should say all the people I've met.
My new soccer team, for instance, is very nice. all the girls treat me with patience and kindness and really just want to help. Which is awesome, because I just want to learn! I just came back from my second practice and I don't know if they noticed but I was certainly surprised that after meeting them all one time they all hugged me to say hello and goodbye. It seems like it would an insult to a person not to hug them upon arrival or before leaving.
And I love it! It's so entirely different from anything I've ever known and yet this is how some people grow up, feeling such unity in groups and communities. it also makes me happy that when a German says "how are you?" they aren't just saying it, they mean it. They really want to know. It makes me think a German would feel very alienated and lonely in America were they in the opposite situation from me.
I start school on Monday! And hopefully everything going tolerably! Wish me luck!

The redhead learned the word for "anxious".

I wonder why? Oh right, because today, I am going to, for the first time, meet a lot of people my own age and become fastened into a society of co-existence with them. I am starting soccer practice today. I will have it mondays and wednesdays for the rest of the summer and hopefully it goes well.
I looked up quite a few words for soccer things so that I might possibly understand my coach, but today I have been understanding things decently well. We went shopping for a little to buy me new Goalie gloves and a pair of sneakers because I have no footwear for athletic activity what so ever. My parents have sent my soccer things but they are not here yet so i must make do with what I have.
Besides my impending social immurgence into teenage land... I'm pretty good.
This morning we had rolls and pretzels with cheese or meat or fruit spread and my host mother was quite disgusted when I decided to try putting raspberry jam on my pretzel. It was very funny. I didn't mean to disgust anyone, I just never have pretzels for breakfast, so what should I put on it. And though I resolved that perhaps I shouldn't do something like that in public, it did taste pretty good.
After breakfast I watched "Juno" in German which I wanted to see mainly because I wanted to know how theytranslated things like,"Jeeze Banana, shut you're freakin' gob, okay?". And it was also good since yesterday around the same time we left for a very long hike to an old castle ruin and a waterfall, and it was very good to rest and do something less involved.
Yesterday we also kept the German sunday night tradition of watching "Tatort". "Tatort" is a german murder mystery show like CSI except for it is only in German and has a rotation of detectives from different parts of Germany. Yesterday they spoke in Hoch Deutsch but the week before they spoke a special dialect and not even my host parents could understand it all completely without subtitles. It was crazy dramatic last night though because in the end like almost every character died except for the inspectors and the killer commited suicide. It was yucky.
i hope this post makes sense, if it doesn't I'm sorry, it kind of has no time order what soever, it goes all over the place. But I miss home! Hope the weather is nice there, it is here!

The redhead saw cologne and forgot to write a post. Whoops!

    Cities are big.
And the funny thing about European cities versus American cities is... in America a city is shopping, government buildings, and entertainment. In Europe, everything, everywhere is built right on top of historical things. anything you can imagine. In fact right now, I'm probably standing above the buried silverware of a very wealth person from a really freaking long time ago.
    Well, probably not, but you get the idea.
So in European cities there are lots of History museums and old Gothic churches and ancient cities up the wazzu! We have some history museums, but not really, these history museums explain the history of our history's history... so, yeah, Europe wins over America by superior age. Duh.
     Now Cologne. Well first off there's the name. The international name for airports and crap is "Cologne" which isn't actually what the Germans or anyone who can pronounce an umlaut call it. They call it "Köln". "Cologne" is a French name. And I know you are thinking,"DUDE, Cologne is in Germany, why the hell does it have a friggin French name? that makes no sense!".Oh but it does my dear friend. Because a long-ass time ago France was really big and half of what is Köln today on the left side of the Rhein, was in France. And the Rhein seperated the civilized city of Cologne from the uncivilized world outside of France.
   So other than the name, Cologne has many old historical buildings, the jemstone of which is their beloved Cathederal. It is the second largest Building in Europe, eclipsed only by the Eiffel tower. It was mountainous stain-glass windows and a spiral staircase mounting to the top of one of its towers. We climbed to the bell in the tower and I'm not lying when I say it was the most exerting and cramped tourist attraction I have ever attended because the staircase is really barely big enough for two people side by side on a step. But it was all fun, the view at the top is breath-taking and the view inside the church is just as so, beautiful, intricate, and huge. Our tour guide, a native of cologne, said that it was so ingrained in their life that he missed it when he went away.
    We also went to the Chocolate museum, which was interesting, and had all the explanatory descriptions in German and English, allowing me to learn a few interesting new words. And down the shopping streets which was really weird because, ´hier, their streets are not made for cars. their shopping streets are for people, their strollers, their, bikes, their dogs, and their feet. And I love it.
    The only thing that was not fun in the least was that it rained pretty heavily for most of the day, forcing me to learn the word "euchgeveicht"(soaked), because heck was I when we were leaving. Fall is coming, and how weird that my school in America has started already, yet here I am writing to you lovely people.

The redhead is being sentimental again....

      Somehow it never occured to me that my world in the United States would go on without me. But somehow it does. Building go up, detentions are given, teenagers forget they had homework, life goes on.
      While perusing through my handwritten letters I recieved from friends and family before I left I came across a quote to my favorite poem. It is by ee cummings and I have, infact, commited it to memory.
      "I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)"(click here to read the whole poem).
      It is a beautiful thought and a beautiful line. It reminds me of how you can take the young lady out of Pennsylvania... but you can't take the Pennsylvania out of the lady. I carry all my friends and my town with me, always. Many times when I am at home I find myself ridiculing it, but it was central to the first 14 years of my life, and I actually miss it.
      And we all forget how important things we leave behind are sometimes. Moving on, it is a part of life. I will return home but it will be somehow a little different. I am not a child anymore, and I will never again be younger, and as I edit these words I'm losing time.
"(...)children guessed(but only a few/and down they forgot as up they grew (....) one day anyone died i guess/(and noone stooped to kiss his face)/busy folk buried them side by side/little by little and was by was/all by all and deep by deep/and more by more they dream their sleep/noone and anyone earth by april/wish by spirit and if by yes." (ee cummings "anyone lived in a pretty how town")
     In my high school last year one of my teachers said Time is the most important resource we have. And I agree and disagree with him. time is one very important resource, but the other and equally as important is choice. We are approached with choices every minute all the time. Jelly or cream cheese? Upstairs or downstairs? Reading a book or fly a kite? And it is our choices that make the time we have worth while.